


A Song To Keep Us Warm

by kindclaws



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Clarke-centric, F/M, Gen, I have a lot of feelings about Clarke and Abby, dance au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:38:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5197715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindclaws/pseuds/kindclaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re just going through the motions,” Bellamy says, taking a step forward. Clarke refuses to intimidated, but the serious look in his eyes puts her off balance. “But dancing with you, it’s like dancing with a ghost. When was the last time you really felt the music?”</p><p>aka the one where Clarke gets a new dancing instructor partner and he shows her a new way to move.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Song To Keep Us Warm

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Exit Music by Radiohead.  
> Enjoy.

The beginner’s salsa class starts promptly at 3:30 pm, in the back room of the old church a few blocks down from the university.

Clarke has been late for it only once in the four years since she’s been teaching dance at the old church in the heart of Ark’s downtown. It was the Tuesday after her father had died, and she was exactly 7 minutes and 43 seconds late. Her students had been milling aimlessly by the mirror, talking about what they did over the weekend and lacing up shoes that wouldn’t leave scuff marks on the worn hardwood floors.

They’d quieted as soon as she swept in, hair tangled in a braid, no amount of eyeliner disguising the redness of her eyes as she’d ducked her head and pulled on her own pair of heels. Silent tears had rolled down her cheeks halfway through the lesson, and one of the well meaning older ladies had asked if she needed a break, and Clarke had shook her head resolutely, because this _was_ her break.

She’d gotten through the entire class with her chin held high and non-verbal cues to direct the clockwise exchange of partners for every new move, so the quiver she knew to be in her voice would remain unheard. And then she had gone home and slept through her biochemistry lecture.

Kane’s poked fun at her over the years for her dedication to the rickety old church-converted-dance-studio he inherited from his mother.

“You work too hard, Clarke,” he starts saying eventually. The amusement melts away to concern as she grows older and colder.

“Hard work’s what keeps the world turning,” Clarke responds briskly, giving him her best prodigal daughter smile, the one she’s perfected as her mother sweeps her around crowded rooms with murmurs of _‘this is Clarke, she’s studying medicine.’_ Kane doesn’t seem convinced, but he drops it, and the days pass much like they always have, except that now Clarke takes off in the morning earlier and earlier and comes home later and later.

It’s this very habit of hers, of willing the slowly ticking minute hand forward by filling her schedule with homework and student politics and teaching extra classes at Kane’s church, that leads to her stretching her muscles in the back room, at approximately 3:16 pm on the day she meets Bellamy Blake. It’s a January, so her nose is still a little red from the bitter wind outside, and she’s lined extra chairs along the back of the room, because class attendance is always high at the start of the year, until everyone loses interest in upholding their new year resolutions.

Clarke doesn’t really need to stretch, not for the beginner’s class - they’re not doing anything complicated enough that requires her to be warmed up, just teaching the uncoordinated but still-devoted students the basic steps and how to listen to the beat of the drums - _1 2 3 pause, 5 6 7 pause_ \- but it gives her something to do, and she relishes in the slow burn at the back of her calves as she reaches for her ankles.

“Are you Clarke?”

The question unsettles her, the same way stepping out of the library when she’s been studying for hours only to find that the sky is already black and painted with stars unsettles her, not enough to make an impact but enough that she takes a mental step backward, reevaluates, shifts her worldview just that infinitesimal millimeter to accommodate the strangeness. Every where she goes, everyone already thinks they know Clarke Griffin, the dean’s daughter, the top of her class, the one who raises her hand in every biology lecture but never speaks outside the auditoriums.

It’s been a long time since someone didn’t know who she was, and for a moment Clarke is tempted to lie, tempted to flip the signature blonde hair over her shoulder and say _‘no, sorry, haven’t seen her.’_

Instead she stands, rocking back and forth on her heels, and gives the man in the doorway a curt nod.

The corner of her mind that is still preoccupied with such things absently notes that he’s attractive. She means this in that she likes the way the light from the open windows hits the planes of his olive-tinged face as he steps into the room, in the way he dumps a plain black leather jacket on one of the waiting chairs and pulls a pair of dance shoes out of his backpack.

“You’re early,” she says as he starts lacing his feet into them. They’re old and have lost their luster, she thinks, maybe second hand because they look a tiny bit too small for him, and she disapproves. “Class doesn’t start for another ten minutes.”

“I know,” he says, standing and rolling each ankle, one after another with an easy, careless balance. “But I figured I’d meet my co-instructor before. Present a united front to the students?”

He gives her a smile that is a tiny bit too mocking and Clarke is already set on edge.

“I don’t have a co-instructor,” she snaps.

“Sure you do. I’m Bellamy,” he says. “Kane hired me, and if I’m not mistaken, the church is his?”

And Clarke can’t exactly argue with him then, because their first few students begin to enter in pairs and trios, all wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, driven by that January enthusiasm that Clarke hates because it means she has to start going to the gym at 4 in the morning to run alone on the treadmills, feet pounding against the traction until she’s ready to collapse. At least it lets her spend the rest of the day in an exhausted, zoned-out bliss, and when she gets home in the evening she can walk past the occupied couch in the living room and collapse into bed and no one can fault her for it, because she is Clarke Griffin and she is _Going Places_ , like her mother always says.

Bellamy hangs around her like a shadow for the first part of the lesson, watching silently as she leads her students through a short review of last week’s moves, his feet fluidly displaying the lead steps that the men typically follow. She hates that he actually seems to know what he’s doing, that splitting up the lead and follower steps between them means that they get the review over with faster and there’s more time to practice.

For the second half of the lesson Clarke plays music over the speakers in every corner of the backroom, connected with wires she’s carefully duct-taped to the floor so no one trips over them. Bellamy makes a face at her song choice, and Clarke can’t say she finds it particularly riveting either, but the drumbeats are loud and clear and slow enough that the beginners can follow along.

“We’re doing cross-body turns,” Clarke tells him, holding out her hands for him to take. He gives her a nod to show her he’s heard, and nothing goes _wrong_ as he puts a hand on her waist and leads her into the turn to show to the students, frankly he’s perfectly capable, but she’s uncomfortable all the same with the hard line of his lips. Their technique is perfect. His arm is stiff across her back.

She doesn’t ask until the end of the lesson, among the clatter of cast off dance shoes and uninteresting chit-chat. Her students never talk to her, and Clarke tells herself she doesn’t care.

“Is there something wrong with the way I teach?” she says, and Bellamy makes that face again, like he’s bit into something sour but he’s trying hard not to hurt the cook’s feelings.

“No,” he says. “It’s very efficient.”

“Good,” Clarke says, and sweeps out the door. She takes big steps down the sidewalk because her next lecture starts in half an hour, and if she hurries she can stop and get a bagel on her way there. It's always nice not to have everyone in the seats around her looking over as her stomach growls. 

“Clarke!” she hears over her shoulder, and then fast-paced footsteps.

“What?” she snaps, stopping and whirling around so fast that Bellamy Blake nearly topples her over.

“I wanted to know what you plan on teaching next week,” he asks.

“Cross-body double turns,” she replies automatically, because the progression just makes sense, and she doesn’t understand why he has to raise his eyebrows at her like that.

“How practical of you,” he comments. Clarke gives him a smile that doesn’t show her teeth and lasts a fraction of a second. (Her mother taught her to smile like that.)

“You’re new to Ark, aren’t you?” she asks. “Nevermind. There are intermediate practice sessions on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 6 pm, and we’re always short on male leads. If you give a damn about this job, I’ll see you there.”

And with that she turns back around and marches down the street and doesn’t look back, even when he makes a funny scoffing sound in his throat, because Clarke has places to be and no time for Bellamy Blake’s poorly disguised criticism.

This is how it goes.

 

................................................................

 

 

She’s only mildly surprised to step into the church next Wednesday, shaking fluffy snowflakes out of her hair, and find Bellamy laughing with Kane, both of them bent over like they’ve just been told the funniest joke they’ve ever heard. Clarke’s mood sours at the little niggling voice that whispers _you’ve never made Kane laugh like that_ in the back of her head, but then, it’s not like she’s made a huge amount of effort to reach out to the man that was once her father’s best friend. It still hurts too much.

“Whenever you’re done,” she says breezily, flouncing past them to the larger room where they hold practices. “I’ll be waiting.”

She doesn’t hear what Bellamy mutters, but she does hear Kane’s resounding sigh and the _thump_ of a hand clapped reassuringly on a back. Oh god, Kane's going dad mode on him, isn't he? He always does that. He doesn't even have children, not that Clarke knows of, but he goes dad mode on everyone who comes into the studio.

“Dance with me,” Bellamy says a moment later, appearing at her shoulder as she fiddles with the radio.

“No,” Clarke says. “You made faces at me last time.”

“I won’t make faces this time,” Bellamy promises, and his face is so earnest that for a moment she can almost see what the giggling women in the back of the class see in him, but then he keeps talking and the moment is ruined. “I believe in second chances.”

She wants to ask what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, but his hand is already outstretched towards her and let it never be said that Clarke backs down from a challenge. She flicks the switch on the radio and lets him spin her into the center of the room, a fast Portuguese melody urging them both into movement.

Clarke is struck by the same off-kilter sensation she had the first time she danced with him a few days ago - like she should be enjoying the weight of his warm hand on her waist, the fluidity and confidence with which he turns her around him and switches their hands, but it feels too much like a performance. She’s vaguely aware of a growing audience as more people filter into the room for a practice session, but all she focuses on are Bellamy’s signals - a twitch of the hand here to tell her to change direction, a palm pressed against the flat of her back, fingers splayed, to tell her to turn.

At the end of the song, he ends up too close to her, head bowed just slightly so his lips hover over her forehead. For a moment she thinks he’ll close the distance and kiss her. She hasn’t kissed anyone in months, not since the night Lexa left for Washington State with a bitter goodbye and she got really drunk with Raven in revenge and regretted everything in the morning, but not enough to pick up the phone and beg Lexa to return. (It was a bad night.)

Then he gives her a mocking bow, that strange and unreadable expression on his face again, and he holds an outstretched hand to another brunette woman Clarke recognizes as Roma from Monday’s intermediate class. Clarke melts back into the crowd, waiting until most people have already partnered up before nudging two students she knows to be shy together, and then accepting the invitation of an elderly gentlemen who used to come here with his wife every week, until suddenly neither of them came for several months, and then only he returned.

“Such a sweet girl,” he says at the end of the dance, patting Clarke’s shoulder fondly. “Linda loved watching you dance.”

Clarke can only force a smile and whirl away as the sound of a cowbell fills the air. She’s been having some trouble with the past tense of the verb ‘love’ lately.

The practice goes well. It always does, as long as Clarke’s been here. Never bad, never great, just well. Clarke’s consistency was the reason they made her a teaching assistant in the biology labs in second year.

And then Bellamy shows up again as she’s stuffing her water bottle into her backpack, like a nagging ghost that just won’t let her be.

“Why do you do this?” he asks, and at the incredulous look she gives him, he clarifies. “Why do you teach dance if you hate it?”

“I don’t hate it,” Clarke replies instantly. Hate it? How could she hate it? She’s been dancing as long as she can remember. Late at night, when Abby thinks she’s asleep, she can hear home videos playing in the living room, can hear the muffled notes of Spanish ballads and three year old Clarke’s giggling as her father takes her chubby hands and leads her through salsa paces, _1 2 3 pause, 5 6 7 pause_.

She’s thought about throwing those videos into the trash a lot, but somehow, on the rare occasions she finds herself home before Abby with one hand on the pile of cd cases, she doesn’t.

“Then why does it feel like you do?”

“Fuck off,” Clarke says.

“Have you ever danced kizomba?” he asks then, completely throwing her off, and she scowls at him.

“No,” she says, swinging her backpack onto her shoulder and leaving through the emergency exit.

Her mother is in the kitchen when she arrives home, chopping vegetables. The half-decorated pizza crust on the counter next to her makes all kinds of memories well up in Clarke - pizza nights were a tradition they started when she was in middle school, one they haven’t followed since Jake’s accident.

“How was your day?” Abby calls out as Clarke kicks off her shoes and locks the deadbolt behind her.

“It went well,” Clarke responds flatly. It always does.

She’s halfway down the hall when the beat of the knife against the cutting board stutters, and Abby gives a pained yelp in its place. Clarke returns out of instinct. Abby stands with her back to Clarke, anxiously examining the new cut on her finger. Clarke hovers at the end of the hall, casting aimlessly for the willpower to say something - _are you okay, mom?_ she could ask - but she doesn’t. Abby sighs and leans against the counter, bracing her head against her uninjured hand. The injured one drops to her side, loose and forgotten.

A single drop of blood drips onto the pristine white tile. Clarke takes a step backwards, and another, and locks herself in her bedroom until she’s called for dinner. They sit, two people at a table for three, and eat silently. Clarke stares at her plate so she doesn’t have to look at the bandage wrapped around Abby’s finger. She washes her own dishes at the end, because she feels bad about the dishwasher detergent getting under the bandage and stinging Abby's wound, but not bad enough to wash all of them.

And then she goes back to her bedroom and studies organic chemistry until the clock on her bedside table is blinking 02:13 am and she can barely keep her eyes open. This is how it goes.

 

................................................................

 

 

She and Bellamy maintain a relatively civil relationship at work. He doesn’t question her again for several weeks, but he does start showing up early to stretch with her. Sometimes.

He’s not there every time, and that bothers Clarke more than the fact that he comes at all, because if he was early before every class, she would know to prepare herself mentally for the stifling silence that hangs between them as she works out all the soreness in her body. But his pattern remains erratic, and it itches at her, this uneasiness she always feels around him, like the world is holding its breath every time they’re in the same room together.

To her annoyance, he takes more initiative in the classes after that first week. He’ll sometimes add an extra twirl or arm flourish to a move she wants to teach the students, and when she confronts him, he’ll only shrug, saying it felt right.

It doesn’t feel right to Clarke, but the students seem to enjoy it and Kane nods approvingly from the doorway, so Clarke bites her tongue and lets Bellamy Blake worm himself into the same routines she’s been teaching for four years, and she does not hate him nearly enough for it.

And then the unthinkable happens - Clarke Griffin misses the beginner’s salsa class at 3:30.

She spends the morning tucked in bed, unwilling to leave in case the painful itch in her throat and her pounding headache goes away soon.

It doesn’t. Abby comes home just after noon. She says she forgot her lunch on the counter as she stands in Clarke’s doorway, but she knows better.

“Is there anything you need?” Abby asks. “Tea? Tylenol? I think we have a heating pad around here somewhere-”

“I’m fine mom,” Clarke croaks, and crawls out from under the covers. She’s at the point in a vicious cycle of feverish chills and warmth where the air on the bare skin of her arms makes her shiver violently as she sits up on the edge of the bed. Her head pounds even worse at the change in position, but she forces herself to stand anyway - and promptly topples forwards onto her bedroom floor.

“Clarke!” Abby shouts, leaping forward from the doorway, arms reaching to help her up. In the silent, rueful hours that follow, Clarke will only remember the powerful surge of anger that welled up inside of her as her mother’s hands grasped her shoulders and tried to balance her, before she flung her arm out and pushed her aside.

“Don’t touch me,” Clarke snarls, and she regrets the words almost as soon as she’s said them, but then Abby is recoiling like Clarke’s weak blow had the force of a freight train, and she doesn’t turn away fast enough to hide the hurt in her brown eyes.

Clarke lies, motionless on the floor, half-propped up on her elbow and gaping at her mother. For a moment, she is about to apologize, but it is that moment with the vegetable knife all over, and her mouth stays silent. Abby flees, and Clarke hears the front door slam.

She remains on that floor for another two hours until the fever subsides and she crawls back into her bed. 3:30 comes and goes. Clarke floats on a haze of sickness and medication.

 

................................................................

 

 

Three days later Clarke returns to her classes. She’s dragging her feet across campus when a lanky, awkward looking freshman laughing uproariously next to a smartly-dressed Asian boy walks into her.

“I’m sorry!” he blurts, scrambling backwards and throwing his hands up in the air when he sees her face, as though he think she’ll physically hit him. Clarke blinks at him. There’s a lit cigarette in one of his raised hands, his friend has one as well.

“Got any more of those?” Clarke asks, nodding her head at his hand.

And that’s how she ends up sitting on the steps of the library in full view of anyone walking down University Avenue. She holds the cigarette loosely between two fingers like she’s seen in old black and white movies, before they made the connection between the coolest new fad and lung cancer, and she doesn’t care who sees her. Actually, she counts every scandalized whisper sent her way by passing students as a tally mark of rebellion - _is that Clarke fucking Griffin? Smoking a cigarette? Has hell frozen over?_

If enough people see her, will word get around to her mother? Somehow, Clarke hopes it does, even if all it inspires is a disappointed look and that _‘what are you going to do with your life?’_ conversation again. Abigail Griffin has not looked Clarke in the eyes in three days and Clarke didn’t realize how much she counted on the rehearsed one-line conversations they had every night - _How was your day - It was fine - Good night_ \- until it started to look like she wouldn’t even have that much.

She hates herself for being too proud to apologize, and wonders when it got so bad between her and her mother. Maybe it’s that self-hatred that keeps her glued to the library steps long after her fingers have gone numb from the cold.

All in all it’s a pretty awful week. And then she spots the leather jacket. He’s walking towards her with the usual surly expression, all furrowed eyebrows and darkened eyes and hands stuffed into his pockets. He really shouldn't be beautiful, and yet - _and yet_. He is. He stops right in front of her, his face level with hers since she’s sitting several steps higher.

Clarke takes another drag of her newly-acquired cigarette as she meets his eyes and is secretly glad he didn’t come here about twenty minutes earlier, when she was coughing like crazy and trying to figure out how to breathe air in and smoke out. 

“You look like hell,” he says as she blows out a cloud of white that dissipates almost as soon as it leaves her lips.

“Thanks,” Clarke says, knowing full well she’s got dark circles under her eyes and that haunted, desperate look everyone seems to get right around midterms. “Maybe I’ll start a trend.”

He ignores her sarcasm, looking long and hard up the length of University Avenue, like he’s embarrassed to be seen talking to her. Clarke doesn’t really blame him. Then he looks at his feet, and then back up at her. His eyes seem softer now.

“You missed a class,” he says. “And two practices.”

Clarke almost tells him she was sick, but somehow that excuse doesn’t seem to encompass enough of the past few months. So instead she chews on the end of the cigarette that’s between her teeth even though it’s fucking disgusting, and doesn’t move away when Bellamy walks up the steps and sits down next to her.

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Clarke says by way of introduction. “I feel like I want to pick a random direction and walk away in it forever. Maybe not forever. Maybe just long enough.”

“How long is long enough?”

“I don’t know,” Clarke says. “Two months? Six? Five years?”

“You wanna go on a road trip?” Bellamy asks, and Clarke laughs, and doesn’t blow out her smoke fast enough so it catches on her still sore throat and gets her coughing all over again. He waits patiently until her breathing has evened out. They’re sitting so close together that Clarke could just relax her knee and let it fall to the sigh and it would brush his thigh.

They’ve touched plenty of times while dancing, but it’s not the same.

“Nah,” she responds. “You’re the kind of guy my mom would call the cops on.”

He grimaces at that, and for some reason it makes her laugh again. Her laugh sounds kind of scratchy, like it’s been recorded on vinyl and she’s just playing it over and over again on a record player inside of her, but it’s still a laugh. She hasn’t laughed in a long time. She’s rusty, but she might get the hang of it later. _Practice makes perfect_ , Jake used to tell her.

“So what makes a girl like you turn into such a zombie?” Bellamy asks, and Clarke isn’t as offended as she should be. She could tell him about all sorts of things, but she doesn’t. Instead she crushes the cigarette under her foot and leans back on her elbows and looks up at the cloudy sky, tinged pink and purple by the setting sun.

“I’m tired,” Clarke says. “I’m tired, and lonely, and not even dancing wakes me up anymore.”

Bellamy makes an agreeing noise, and she looks at him, squinting. She doesn’t look at him directly a lot, but she does now, forcing herself not to glance away. There are freckles on his cheeks she’s never noticed before.

“You’re just doing what other people tell you to do, aren’t you,” Bellamy says, and he doesn’t lean forward, doesn’t move at all, but Clarke feels like he’s looming over her anyway. That’s how intense his eyes are. “And you’ve been doing it for so long you don’t remember why you love what you loved.”

“That seems accurate,” Clarke says.

“Have you ever danced kizomba?” he asks, and Clarke nearly rolls her eyes.

“You already asked me that question,” she says. “Weeks ago.”

“Well I’m asking again.”

She kicks at him halfheartedly and misses. He gives her that look again like he’s trying to rip her apart and see what’s written on the inside of the broken pieces. She shakes her head, suddenly mute.

“I’m taking you dancing,” Bellamy says decidedly, and Clarke doesn’t have anyone waiting for her at home, not really, and she has no desire to get started on the lab reports due next week, so she follows him onto the next bus and they sit in silence, thighs brushing, staring out opposite windows. It's peaceful. A very different silence than the one that haunts the apartment she shares with Abby.

By the time they get off the bus the sun has long since set and the sky is painted the softest gradient of blue to black. Clarke’s fingers itch for a box of pencil crayons. The area of town he takes her to is a little seedy, a little exciting. She studies the lines of motion of the street’s other pedestrians, commits to memory glowing open signs and the laughter that spills out of crowded bars. Clarke tugs at the turtleneck sweater she has on and hopes she doesn’t look too out of place.

“Where does one dance kizomba?” she asks, mostly to humour Bellamy because there’s a giddy bounce in his step as they walk down the street.

“A bar near my place,” he says. “My sister found it. Owned by a Cuban family. They put on all sorts of rhythms. But tonight is kizomba night, so that’s what will be playing the most.”

Clarke hums in response.

Bellamy pulls her into an alley without warning, and she yelps as she staggers against his chest before she manages to right herself. Something scampers in the small space between the two crumbling brick buildings and she startles, but it is only a mangy orange cat, eyes glowing from the lights across the street.

“This is the basic step,” Bellamy says, taking her hand and placing it on his shoulder, his other one enveloping her pale fingers entirely. “It's simple. A side to side two step, like this.”

Clarke follows his lead, lets him guide her gently into the repetitive line pattern, until she gets the flow of it and he starts changing the angles, turning them more loosely and naturally. They sway in the darkness of the alley, and she is oddly content. Kizomba is slower than the salsa she is used to, and part of her is tempted to speed up, to rush through the steps as she always does, but Bellamy’s hand is warm and heavy on the small of her back.

 _Patience_ , it seems to say. She remembers being grudgingly impressed by the fluidity of his style, when she first saw him dance salsa. He must have picked it up from here.

“This is okay,” she says casually, tilting her head and looking at him. He’s already looking back, traces of a smile on his face.

“Try a turn,” he says, his palm sliding up the curve of her back and pressing between her shoulderblades to spin her. Kizomba’s slow, languid pace reminds her, oddly, of lazy morning sex with Lexa, but for some reason her mind replaces Lexa with Bellamy and something inside of her coils, hot and heavy. The pace also makes her jarringly aware of every deliberate placement of her feet. Bellamy's voice suddenly in her ear makes her startle. “You're not bad at this. All right. Let's head in now.”

The bar he leads her to is already crowded when they reach it, and Clarke stands up a little straighter under the gaze of the bouncer. The first thing she is aware of is the heat. There are so many bodies packed in the space under the dim lights, and the windows cracked open at the front of the bar do little to cycle the air. Clarke breathes in the smell of sweat and beer and unrestrained joy and wonders how it could possibly appeal.

The music rumbles throughout the establishment, so loud and low that Clarke feels the drum beat in her bones, feels the vibrations shake her inside, a second heartbeat that makes her breathe in deeply and wonder how she possibly could have stayed away this long. She and Bellamy are forced closer together simply by the press of the people around them. His arm loops around her, and they sway.

There’s a difference between the way they danced at Kane’s old church and the way they danced in the alley and the way they dance now. Bellamy is so close that he seems everywhere, hands warm on her back and sliding up her arm, his chest a grounding presence, his cheek pressed against the top of her head. Salsa is a social dance between friends. Kizomba is... intimate.

It takes only two songs for Clarke to start overheating. She resists taking off her thick turtleneck as long as she can, because the tank top she’s wearing underneath dips a little lower than she’s used to and displays two cheerful cartoon testtubes and a chemistry pun, which she found hilarious this morning, but slightly less appropriate here.

But then her hair is sticking to her neck and she can scarcely breathe, so she breaks away from Bellamy after the end of the third song and pulls the sweater over her head and tosses it onto the bench that lines the bar’s wall. She’ll find it later.

“Stripping already?” Bellamy asks when she returns, a playful glint in his eyes as he yells over the music. Clarke just throws back her head and laughs as he pulls her into his arms, intoxicated by the air that hangs warm and heavy over their heads, by the dancers around them that move like they’re made of water, by the sense of belonging that comes with being among them.

She has no idea how long they remain there. Once Bellamy decides she’s gotten the hang of the basic steps, he sends her off in search of other partners. She does not dance quite as close to the others as she did to him, but she learns their styles, borrows a little from each, and returns to him.

The second last song the bar plays before they leave is a salsa one, quick and upbeat and begging for a breathless twirl. Clarke smiles so widely as Bellamy spins her in increasingly ridiculous moves that her cheeks feel like they’re going to split, like there’s so much of her inside that she’s going to burst. He’s laughing too, genuinely, with his whole body, shoulders shaking under the weight of her hand and hair falling into his eyes.

And then they’re back to kizomba, and he pulls her in again, presses his forehead to hers, and it is the first time Clarke Griffin thinks to herself that she does not love Bellamy Blake yet, but she could. Given time and a little push in the right direction, she _could_. It is this realization that leaves her breathless, pressed up against him, lined up so closely to each other that in the near darkness she is not so sure where she ends and he begins.

It is so easy to tilt her head up and kiss him. He kisses back, and it’s not the way she imagined. It’s gentler, it gives her the direction but lets her choose the distance. It’s like kizomba, and the delight that wells up in her makes her roll her hips against him until he groans into her mouth.

They stumble out of the bar with his arm thrown over her shoulder. Bellamy raises a hand in farewell to the bouncer, and Clarke wraps her own arm around his waist, breathes in the smell of sweat and leather and something else she can't quite identify but wants more of. 

“Did you feel it?” he asks as they’re waiting for the bus, Clarke’s hands tucked inside his jacket for warmth from the night air that hits them violently after the heat of the bar.

“I felt a lot of things,” Clarke says, surprising even herself. Bellamy chuckles and rolls his eyes upwards, to a darkened sky with stars too weak to stand up to the glow of the nearby streetlights.

“I mean the music. The soul,” he says. “Did you feel the soul?”

She doesn’t answer immediately. Clarke thinks of the dances they’ve shared at the old church, the ones that were perfectly right in terms of technique but always felt unbalanced and forced somehow, in a subtle way she couldn’t define. She didn’t get any of that tonight. Tonight was messy and learning as she went and being okay with that.

“I think so,” Clarke says, leaning her head against his shoulder. He breathes in and out evenly, breath fogging in the night air. The time their bus was supposed to arrive comes and goes, and eventually Bellamy curses public transit and announces he’ll just walk her home. They link arms and Clarke doesn’t step on any cracks in the sidewalk and wonders how such a terrible day could have turned into a night like this.  
  
“You weren’t really dancing when I met you,” Bellamy says, his voice low and quiet, a little bit hesitant like he’s not sure he should be saying this out loud. “You were just going through the motions.”

“Yeah,” Clarke says. “Is that why you kept looking at me weird?”

Bellamy shrugs as they cross a deserted intersection.

“It happens. You do something for so long that you keep doing it because it’s all you’ve ever known. Sometimes you just need a new perspective so you remember why you loved it in the first place.”

Clarke stops suddenly, overcome with emotion. She thinks of her father, tapping his foot to salsa music as he tinkered with the car engine in their garage, swaying his hips as he tried different wrenches, and suddenly feels the overwhelming urge to apologize.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“Just don’t dance like a ghost anymore,” Bellamy says. “It was unsettling, to say the least.”

She can’t disagree with that.

Clarke kisses him again outside her apartment, kisses him so hungrily that for a moment she wonders if she’ll be able to stop. But she does, and he reaches one hand up slowly, and cups her cheek. Then he pinches it playfully and sends her the same roguish grin that has half their student population lining up to dance with him, and Clarke groans and slaps his wrist away.

“See you next class?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Clarke says, and then, warming to the idea, she says it again with more conviction. “Yeah.”

“Good,” Bellamy responds, and then he spins on his heel and waves a hand over his shoulder as he walks away, and Clarke feels grounded for the first time in months. She breathes in deeply, relishing in the cool air that stings her nostrils.

Her father is dead, and she’s still not certain what she wants to do with her life. But Clarke Griffin is alive and finally at peace and that means something. This is how it goes.

She takes the stairs up to her apartment instead of the elevator, because there is still so much pent up energy in her limbs. She thinks she could conquer a mountain right now. Her fingers fumble with the keys at her door, because there are tears welling up in her eyes and she’s grinning and she wipes them away as she walks inside.

The light in the living room is on. The home videos are playing again. Clarke closes the front door behind her, and the sound of recorded laughter abruptly stops. She kicks off her shoes and walks forward. Abby is wrapped up in a throw blanket on the couch, eyes red-rimmed and tired. On the tv there is a frozen, grainy image of Jake Griffin’s legs and a toddler Clarke beaming up at his offscreen face.

“You’re out late,” Abby says quietly. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Clarke replies automatically. She turns towards her bedroom, makes it a few steps before Bellamy’s words echo in her mind. She returns to the living room to find her mother staring at the remote with an unreadable expression.

“Mom,” Clarke says. “Can I tell you about my night?”

Abby looks up and her eyes widen into what can only be described as a deer in headlights expression.

“Yes of course,” she says, sounding a little strangled. She abruptly takes her feet off the couch and shifts, making more room next to her. Clarke gives her a tiny smile and curls up in the cleared space, unconsciously mirroring her mother as she tucks her feet under her legs. She’s shocked to see just how relieved she is that Abby has accepted her olive branch, her first attempt at mending the fractures that have grown between them since Jake’s death.

“Well,” Clarke begins. “It goes like this.”

And they talk long into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Have a dance au. I wrote this a few months ago - June, I think? - and told myself I'd add a bunch more scenes to it, but I really need to stop writing super long fics, so. I edited it a bit (a lot) and here we are. Y'all kept demanding a Quidditch Boy au, which I still think is hella weird, but this is close enough, right? There's dancing
> 
> Anyway. I have a lot of feelings about [salsa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cvuHnI74Nk), it's my first dancing love and it's very fun and social and great. I really recommend that or [swing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIRIAKhSxqQ) if you're bored and you want to get some exciting cardio. Kizomba, on the other hand... oh boy. Much more intimate. [Here's a visual.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm_TzKprOls)
> 
> I also have a lot of feelings about Abby and Abby&Clarke, because I see a lot of my relationship with my own mother in it. Abby has a lot to answer for, yes. But don't give me blatant Abby hate, fuck that. More Abby&Clarke figuring out their shit and rebuilding their family 2k15.
> 
> Who else liked that little 'I want to pick a direction and walk in it for a few months' nod to canon? MUHAHAHA.
> 
> As with pretty much all my fic, I might continue this at a later date. Who knows. I am a free spirit.
> 
> Find me on tumblr as kindclaws. I post a lot of The 100 and ridiculous life anecdotes, it's swell.


End file.
